


needs and wants and obligations

by ashkatom



Series: FBaTNverse [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Multi, OT3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashkatom/pseuds/ashkatom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change."<br/>-- Troll Will Smith</p>
<p>You don't know how you even feel about your friends, now. You just want them to stay your friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	needs and wants and obligations

At seven sweeps old, you realise an incredibly unpleasant thing. It goes like so:

Pailing (the consensual kind) for everyone else is a joy-filled exploration of  their partner’s bodies, full of bonding and connectedness with their true complement or rival. It is fulfilling and satisfying and an expression of a deep connection.

Pailing, for you, is locking yourself in the ablutions chamber while everyone else is asleep, biting your arm to keep from making noise, and simultaneously trying to imagine a world where you could have a matesprit -kind of? - instead of someone who’ll cull you if they realise who you are while trying to not hate yourself for being gross and untouchable.

It never works.

Panthe hit drone age about a sweep and a half ago, and you’re not sure but you think Pol helped her with her contribution. The sick, oily feeling that chews through your digestion sac whenever you see them together is something that shames you. It’s not Panthe’s fault that you’re a complete freak of nature. It’s not Pollux’s fault that his blood colour is _normal_ , so that he can pail his way through the Empire even if he is presumed dead.

You loathe your hormones for making you do stupid things like snap at your friends and cry yourself to sleep.  You loathe yourself for being susceptible to them.

\--

Much like the rest of your life, you cannot be left to your abject misery in peace. Something - quite possibly your increasingly surly attitude and ability to disappear from any room Pol and Panthe are occupying in three seconds - tips Rosa off to the fact that you are Unhappy. 

Dolorosa deftly and tactfully approaching a sensitive topic is definitely something to be terrified of.

She gets you alone -which isn’t hard, these nights - and promptly puts you to work ironing giant pieces of cloth that are already perfectly flat, as far as you can tell. You don’t know the wisdom in giving you a heavy burny thing before instigating a lecture, because you’re 99% sure at some point you will drop it on your foot.

She’s finishing up a dress for someone or other, picking up spare credits the way she always does whenever you stay in one place long enough. Her fingers pull needle through cloth with unerring accuracy, making tiny little invisible stitches as she closes up a seam.

“You don’t have to be jealous of Psiionic and Disciple,” she comments, not looking up from her work.

You already hate this. “Not jealous,” you mutter, and shove the iron over the cloth in the most useless fashion you can muster.

“I mean you don’t _have_ to be,” she says, patiently. “Your blood colour isn’t secret now. There’s nothing to stop you from finding someone you can trust - which you have an entire following of, in case you’d forgotten - and working out your frustrations. Preferably as we’re about to leave somewhere.”

You gape. Then you let out a sound like an accordion being stepped on. Then you manage to say, “What?”

Rosa shrugs. “I’m just saying.” She looks up and smiles. “Don’t burn the cloth, it was expensive.”

You carefully set the iron aside. “It’s not that bad.”

Rosa arches an eyebrow, and you look away. She loves you, but she doesn’t pity you. And as such, she’s always done you the favour of never sugarcoating the truth. You’ve always appreciated that from her, but this is the first time you’ve realised how terrible a liar it makes you, since you’ve done your best to return the favour.

You edge around the ironing slab and sink into a cross-legged seat next to Rosa, since she has the only chair in the room. “It’s kind of bad,” you say, and wrap your arms around yourself. “But.”

“Yes?” she prompts you, and hands down a box of pins. “Here, sort these out.”

You look at the pins. “Seriously?”

“Don’t make me alter your leggings,” Rosa says, serene. You sigh and start stabbing pins into a pincushion. You’re not really sure why there are so many different types, but they’re going to be sorted. “Now, you were saying?”

You narrowly miss stabbing yourself as half your body makes a valiant effort to run away from the conversation. “It’s lonely,” you finally admit, and it’s the first time you’ve let yourself admit that loneliness is the problem rather than just your hormones going crazy. Not that the hormones aren’t a significant problem in and of themselves, but.

“Oh, Karcin,” Rosa says, and sticks her needle into the cloth before resting a hand on your shoulder. You very resolutely continue sorting pins, and your eyes are only watery because you’re not very good at it.

“I just,” you say, and it all bursts out of you at once. “Pol and Panthe have each other and they’re normal and I’m never going to have that and I don’t even know if I want it but-” and you have to stop because you’re choking on concepts you’ve never been able to word properly.

Rosa slips down until she’s sitting beside you and wraps an arm around your shoulders. “You have more than you realise.”

You make a noise similar to the accordion noise from before, but sadder. A trombone noise.

“Disciple and Psiionic are greater friends to you than any other troll has.” She brushes your hair back with her fingers. “You have no idea of the fortune you’ve found in them. Concupiscent loneliness fades. I think your friendship may last forever.”

“It still hurts now,” you mutter.

“I’ll tell them to tone it down.” Rosa tilts her head until her horns bump against yours. “It is kind of sickening.” 

It hits you then, that Rosa’s never been able to have a stable relationship since raising three trolls and keeping you all hidden from the drones has been kind of a mutually exclusive activity. You nudge your way further under her arm until you can rest your head on her shoulder. “Love you, Rosa.”

She picks up her sewing again and begins stitching her tiny stitches. “Then you can get back to ironing,” she says, but you can detect a note of love in her voice. You’re pretty sure.

\--

The thing is, Rosa knows what love is. It’s the only word that applies to you two, even if you have repurposed it a bit to fit outside quadrants. Like it did on Beforus. You call her your lusus because she raised you, and like a lusus she loves you. She’s just able to express it better than most lusii.

Pol and Panthe, on the other hand, don’t really get it. Pol was raised with other trolls long enough to pick up quadrants, even if he can’t seem to stick to them very well. Panthe manages, you think. You’ve never asked. You never thought it would affect you.

And you? You have never understood. You’ve stopped trying.

So you really, really don’t know what to make of it when Panthe gives you a _Look_ that’s equal parts guilty and pity as she sits next to you in your blanket pile. It’s the first time you and she have been alone together in a few weeks, and you can’t really scrounge up an excuse to leave your pile and run away from the feelings she’s shooting at you.

She doesn’t say anything. Neither do you. After a long time of silence, she eases out of her hunched-up position and curls up with you in the pile properly, your sides touching.

“Sorry,” she says, quiet enough that you barely hear her. 

You stare at the ceiling as you contemplate your response. Finally you say, “There’s no reason to be sorry, if you’re happy.”

She props herself up on her elbow to frown at you, and doesn’t speak until you roll your eyes and look at her properly. “None of us are happy when the others are unhappy, you _immense dork_ ,” she says, and punches you in the shoulder. “But you’re right! I’m not sorry about being with Psi. I _am_ sorry that I purractically rubbed my happiness in your face when I should have realised how much it would hurt.”

“It’s fine,” you say, and roll over, because if you have to keep looking at her feeling sorry for you you’re going to run out of the room screaming and never return.

An arm snakes around your waist and you feel Panthe settle in behind you. She nuzzles into the back of your neck and wriggles her other arm under your head and presses up against you, a solid presence that you can’t ignore.

“The fuck are you doing,” you say, flatly, and pretend your voice doesn’t hitch in your throat.

“It’s not a bad thing to want comfort from another person,” she says, and nudges your calves with her foot until you let her tangle your legs with hers. “I’ll sleep here today.”

You’re too fucking grateful to refuse.

\--

And that’s it. Sometimes Panthe sleeps with you, sometimes she sleeps with Pol, sometimes she sleeps alone, sometimes she’s out of the hive. For all that she and Pol are clearly stupid for each other - a descriptor you decide is very literal, after having to put up with all the dumb smiles and meaningful looks they exchange when they’re in the same room - you don’t think they’re possessive of each other.

She never pushes you, though. You can’t tell if she means sharing your pile to be a romantic gesture, or the lead-up to a romantic gesture, or if she genuinely thinks you just need a day-long hug. You’re not sure what you want it to be. 

You wish, more than ever, that you understood how _normal_ people do this.

An equinox or so after Panthe starts sleeping with you, Pol follows her into your block one night, barefoot and dragging a blanket. He stands around awkwardly shifting from foot to foot until you roll your eyes at him and make a dumb expansive gesture - _welcome to my blanket pile_ \- and he crawls in to join you. You spend the day unable to sleep because of the tight feeling in your chest as you’re sandwiched between the two trolls that mean more than the world to you, Pol snoring into your chest and Panthe’s breath uncomfortably warm on your neck.

Your life is incredibly dumb.

This arrangement becomes the norm surprisingly quickly. It’s only a couple of weeks later that you realise that you haven’t seen Panthe and Pol go off on their own since, and ice shoots through you. You don’t know what they _want_ , you don’t know what you can even give them, you don’t think they understand you and you definitely don’t understand them and _why haven’t they said anything_.

It doesn’t help that the new sleeping arrangements have given you something else to think about in the ablutions stall.

You’re scared, is what it all boils down to. Because, logically, you’re pretty sure that Panthe and Pol are okay with being anything you need them to be. But you want them to _want_ you, not just feel sorry for you and toss you tidbits of intimacy. And if it turns out that they don’t want you as you, enthusiastically and lovingly, then you are pretty sure your bloodpusher will crack in two and you will die. This stasis, you convince yourself, is more than you could have ever hoped for. You love them, and they something you, and you can deal with that.

You’re pretty good at lying to yourself, when you have to. You’ll overturn casteism, Pol and Panthe love you like you love them, and you’re all going to live happily ever after.

_ Right. _

You know what Rosa’s advice would be. She’s always pushed you to stand on your own feet, and as such her advice would actually be a firm reminder that you can use your words and _ask_ Panthe and Pol what they want from you. Every time you try, though, the words die in your throat and then everyone’s asleep and you have to swallow the words you don’t know down for another day.

Eventually, you promise yourself. Eventually you’re going to want to stop torturing yourself in your own head enough that you’ll ask. Even if it does mean that your bloodpusher breaks and you die.

You only work up the courage to talk to them when it occurs to you that you’re still treating Pol and Panthe like enemies and hating yourself. You want this bullshit self-loathing pity party to _stop_ and you want your _friends_.

\--

Panthe looks surprised when you wail, “What do you _want_ from me?” at her, although you can’t blame her. Your bloodpusher thuds in your ears as you wait for her answer.

She frowns in thought as you try to breathe, then walks towards you with the frown still on her face. You back away, because you have been pounced on by Panthe and it’s not pleasant, only to run into a Pol, who you’re pretty sure wasn’t behind you before.

“Did you just herd me?” you ask, resigned to your fate as Pol wraps his arms around your waist and rests his chin on your head.

“Yep,” Panthe says, unashamed. “So I could do this.” She closes in on you, hooks her thumbs into the corners of your mouth, and pulls up. “I can’t remempurr the last time you smiled, you know?”

You can feel Pol grinning at your predicament and you can’t even swat him. Instead, you settle for glaring at Panthe.

“We want you to be happy, dumbface,” she says, and stops forcing your mouth into a rictus grin. She looks sad, to your confused. “Why would you think we wanted anything _furom_ you?”

You stutter, a little, unable to actually put to words everything that is actually wrong with you - your blood, your failure to have normal feelings, your existence- and fail to express the logical conclusion that though they like you, they’d only be treating you romantically to get something back in turn, they don’t need you as much as you need them and they’ll go back to themselves as soon as you get boring and you don’t want to get boring because you don’t want them to leave.

“I can’t,” you say, instead. “I don’t.”

Pol reaches up and runs his thumb over your cheekbone. “Relax.”

“I just,” you say, helplessly, and hate yourself for the way you lean into his touch. “I’m _sorry_.”

“Ssssh,” he says, and eases you down to the blanket pile, tucks you against his shoulder as Panthe sits beside you. You can barely stand to look at either of them. “I get it. It’s fine.” He strokes your back and you calm down a little, your panic replaced with bleakness. “KC, it’s not a crime to _care for people_ , fuck. We care about you too.”

“ _Fur_ you,” Panthe adds, and scooches closer until her knees bump against yours.

You stare down at your hands in your lap, pale grey marks in your palms where you’ve dug your nails in. “You pity me,” you say, eventually, bitterly. “It’s not - I don’t want _pity_ ,” you add, because you already pity yourself enough and it’s not pleasant.

“Hey,” Panthe snaps. “Quit it.”

“What?” you ask.

She talks with her hand as she does her best impression of you, which is terrible but painfully accurate. “Bluh bluh I’m Karcin and I don’t understand pity and nobody understands love or meeeeeee.” She folds her arms and glares at you. “You don’t _understand_ pity. Fine. You could ask.”

Pol sticks a hand in front of you and does _his_ best hand-talking impression of you, which is worse than Panthe’s. “But I am full of _pain_ , Panthe, and pity is a bad thing and also so last sweep.”

“Are you fucking serious?” you ask him.

“You do sound kind of dumb,” he says. You shove him and he laughs. “Look, we’re just telling you, you have the wrong idea about pity.”

“It’s not about feeling sorry for you and thinking, ‘haha, thank furick we’re not him,’” Panthe offers. “It’s being sad when you’re sad and wanting you to be happy even if your life sucks.”

You bury your head in your arms and decide to never come out. You can feel your cheeks burning with shame and you’re probably going to start crying if they keep trying to make you feel better. “I don’t want you to be doing this out of, of some obligation,” you say and hope it doesn’t get through your arms.

There’s a long silence. You peek up only to see Pol and Panthe exchanging a look that you can’t decipher, and hide again before they can direct it at you.

“Kar,” Panthe says, gently. You look up at her a little, and she cups your cheek. “You’re not an obligation. That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said tonight, and you have said _purrlenty_ of dumb things.”

“But-”

She places her hand over your mouth. “You’re not listening. We _want_ you to be happy. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t be here. We could just walk away and let you work through problems in your own time. Your life sucks and we _want_ to make it suck a little less, however we can and however you’re okay with.”

“You’re not some chore,” Pol adds, and you blink back tears. “You’re KC. We love you, even if the way we love you is confusing.”

You don’t think you can cope with this. “I, uh,” you say, and scrub at your eyes as subtly as possible because you’re not a sap who cries at the drop of a head covering, “I think I need to sleep on this.”

“That’s fine,” Panthe says. She grabs a blanket and throws it over the three of you, but other than that, neither of them make a move to leave you. You’re left with the sound of your own breaths, the faint glow of Pol’s eyes, and the strange feeling of the tight ball of self-loathing in your chest easing away a little.

Rosa was right, kind of. You’re pretty sure now that Panthe and Pol will never be going anywhere, and you’re okay with that. You won’t be going anywhere either.

\--

You wake up sandwiched between your two favourite people in the world and this time you let yourself enjoy it.


End file.
